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was an inimical rain. His sore throat had been joined by a terrific headache, of which he had only just
become aware. He got to Room 46 and lay down on the bed platform, which seemed to be much farther
down than usual. He shook, and could not stop shaking. He pulled the orange blanket up around him and
huddled up, trying to sleep, but he could not stop shaking, because he was under constant atomic
bombardment from all sides, increasing as the temperature increased.
He had never been ill, and never known any physical discomfort worse than tiredness. Having no idea
what a high fever was like, he thought, during the lucid intervals of that long night, that he was going
insane. Fear of madness drove him to seek help when day came. He was too frightened of himself to ask
help from his neighbors on the corridor: he had heard himself raving in the night. He dragged himself to
the local clinic, eight blocks away, the cold streets bright with sunrise spinning solemnly about him. At the
clinic they diagnosed his insanity as a light pneumonia and told him to go to bed in Ward Two. He
protested. The aide accused him of egoizing and explained that if he went home a physician would have
to go to the trouble of calling on him there and arranging private care for him. He went to bed in Ward
Two. All the other people in the ward were old. An aide came and offered him a glass of water and a
pill. "What is it?" Shevek asked suspiciously. His teeth were chattering again.
"Antipyretic."
"What's that?"
"Bring down the fever."
"I don't need it."
The aide shrugged. "All right," she said, and went on.
Most young Anarresti felt that it was shameful to be ill: a result of their society's very successful
prophylaxy, and also perhaps a confusion arising from the analogic use of the words "healthy" and "sick."
They felt illness to be a crime, if an involuntary one. To yield to the criminal impulse, to pander to it by
taking pain relievers, was immoral. They fought shy of pills and shots. As middle age and old age came
on, most of them changed their view. The pain got worse than the shame. The aide gave the old men in
Ward Two their medicine, and they joked with her. Shevek watched with dull incomprehension.
Later on there was a doctor with an injection needle.
"I don't want it," Shevek said. "Stop egoizing," the doctor said. "Roll over." Shevek obeyed.
Later on there was a woman who held a cup of water for him, but he shook so much that the water
was spilt, wetting the blanket. "Let me alone," he said. "Who are you?" She told him, but he did not
understand. He told her to go away, he felt very well. Then he explained to her why the cyclic hypothesis,
though unproductive in itself, was essential to his approach to a possible theory of Simultaneity, a
cornerstone. He spoke partly in his own language and partly in Iotic, and wrote the formulas and
equations on a slate with a piece of chalk so that she and the rest of the group would understand, as he
was afraid they would misunderstand about the cornerstone. She touched his face and tied his hair back
for him. Her hands were cool. He had never felt anything pleasanter in all his life than the touch of her
hands. He reached out for her hand. She was not there, she had gone.
A long time later, he was awake. He could breathe. He was perfectly well. Everything was all right.
He felt disinclined to move. To move would disturb the perfect, stable moment, the balance of the world.
The winter light along the ceiling was beautiful beyond expression. He lay and watched it. The old men
down the ward were laughing together, old husky cackling laughs, a beautiful sound. The woman came in
and sat down by his cot He looked at her and smiled.
"How do you feel?"
"Newborn. Who are you?"
She also smiled. "The mother."
"Rebirth. But I'm supposed to get a new body, not the same old one."
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"Nothing on earth. On Urras. Rebirth is part of their religion."
"You're still lightheaded." She touched his forehead. "No fever." Her voice in saying those two words
touched and struck something very deep in Shevek's being, a dark place, a place walled in, where it
reverberated back and back in the darkness. He looked at the woman and said with terror, "You are
Rulag."
"I told you I was. Several times!"
She maintained an expression of unconcern, even of humor. There was no question of Shevek's
maintaining anything. He had no strength to move, but he shrank away from her in unconcealed fear, as if
she were not his mother, but his death. If she noticed this weak movement, she gave no sign.
She was a handsome woman, dark, with fine and well-proportioned features showing no lines of age,
though she must be over forty. Everything about her person was harmonious and controlled. Her voice
was low, pleasant in timbre. "I didn't know you were here in Abbenay," she said, "or where you
were or even whether you were. I was in the Press depot looking through new publications, picking
things up for the Engineering library, and I saw a book by Sabul and Shevek. Sabul I knew, of course.
But who's Shevek? Why does it sound so familiar? I didn't arrive at it for a minute or more. Strange, isn't
it? But it didn't seem reasonable. The Shevek I knew would be only twenty, not likely to be co-authoring
treatises in metacosmology with Sabul. But any other Shevek would have to be even younger than
twenty!& So I came to see. A boy in the domicile said you were here& This is a shockingly
understaffed clinic. I don't understand why the syndics don't request some more postings from the
Medical Federation, or else cut down the number of admissions; some of these aides and doctors are
working eight hours a day! Of course, there are people in the medical arts who actually want that: the
self-sacrifice impulse. Unfortunately it doesn't lead to maximum efficiency& It was strange to find you. I
would never have known you& Are you and Palat in touch? How is he?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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